geekosystem

Kickstarter has given the world a lot of interesting things. Soon it will bring a larger-than-life statue of Robocop to Detroit. The project raised more than its $50,000 goal back in March of 2011, and the statue is finally ready to be cast in bronze. If you've ever wanted to see a pre-bronze Robocop statue, we have pictures after the jump.

There's been a lot of talk lately about what, exactly, are Kickstarter's guidelines and how they apply to various bigger fish, as it were, coming into the rather small pond of crowdfunding. Lots of claims have been made, and the grumbling is audible across most forms of social media, but what does Kickstarter the company actually think about all this? Hint: They like projects like the ones Zach Braff, Penny Arcade, and Veronica Mars have run.

If you're a frequent listener to This American Life, then you might already be familiar with the story of Duke Fightmaster, a guy who started a talk show out of his bedroom because he wanted to take over Late Night after Conan O'Brien left. His real life story is being made into a movie, but he doesn't get to star in it, so he'd like to make a movie of his own. He's real close to making it happen.

Zach Braff's first film, Garden State, has passionate fans, and they've all been wondering what's kept Braff from doing another film. The one-word answer is "Financing." Movies are expensive to make, but after the success of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, Braff decided to turn to the crowdfunding site to pay for his next film Wish I Was Here with a little help from his friends.

Project Eternity from Obsidian Entertainment, which is composed of a lot of folks that helped make Black Isle Studios the role-playing video game powerhouse that it once was, is about as close as we're ever going to get to a new role-playing game using the Infinity Engine -- the backbone of games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. That's more or less how the successful Kickstarter campaign was initially pitched, and now they've put out a video full of in-game footage that certainly seems to prove their claim.

There's been something of an uproar lately about Kickstarter. Specifically, folks have been questioning the meaning of the immensely successful Veronica Mars movie campaign. Does this mean we can use Kickstarter to fund whatever we want? Can we cut out Hollywood entirely? On the negative side of things, people have asked whether this is a good road to go down at all. In essence, Hollywood could hold franchises hostage until people give them enough money. The latest video from PBS Idea Channel explores this and more.

Dwarven Forge sets are like the LEGO of hardcore D&D-type geeks. They're high-quality, interlocking 3D dungeon pieces that you can use with miniatures to make any game visually more incredible, but they're just as fun to play around with aimlessly. The problem is, Dwarven Forge sets are expensive -- like $135 for a basic 37-piece dungeon set. But not for long! Stefan Pokorny, CEO and artist behind Dwarven Forge, has just launched a Kickstarter to produce new tiles that are affordable for everyone.

Times are tough for terrorist organizations right now, especially the long suffering agents of Cobra. These guys can't catch a break any more than they can hit the broad side of a barn with a volley of laser fire at fifteen paces. No longer a force that can intimidate world leaders out of money and having apparently alienated the venture capital community, the organization has taken to Kickstarter in an effort to crowdsource funds for their latest nefarious plot for world domination. If that sounds like something you'd like to get behind, keep reading to hear the full pitch from Cobra Commander, or at least a reasonably effective impersonator.

Veronica Mars fans weren't the only ones excited when creator Rob Thomas successfully raised over $2.5 million in one day on Kickstarter to make a Veronica Mars movie. It opened up a whole host of possibilities in the minds of fans of other shows. If Kickstarter can bring Veronica Mars back, then what's next? Firefly? Sorry, Browncoats, but no. Not Firefly, and that's from Joss Whedon himself.

If there's one Kickstarter campaign that epitomizes what, exactly, Kickstarter means to people, it's the one that just launched for a Veronica Mars movie. Yes, folks, this is really happening. You are not dreaming, do not panic. They're asking for a seemingly ridiculous amount of money, but the campaign's also chugging along at a nice pace. If it does happen to fail, though, we might never get a movie for the cancelled television show.

It's apparently a good time for video games, what with the multiple success stories coming out of Kickstarter campaigns. Some of these are even slowly reaching fruition, like Shadowrun Returns from Jordan Weisman and Harebrained Schemes. Set for an early Summer 2013 release, we'd yet to see any gameplay video out of the developers. That is, until yesterday. They've finally released the first look at the game, and it's 20 minutes of delicious XCOM-flavored gameplay.

Rumors of some new incarnation of Planescape: Torment begat rumors of a sequel, then of some new incarnation once again. While the locked-up intellectual property -- that is, the Planescape setting owned by Wizards of the Coast -- used in the 1999 Black Isle Studios game of Torment prevented a true sequel, we've now got the next best thing, or maybe something better. The chatter and hype have finally given way to actuality: The Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera launched today and was fully funded in six hours. Developer inXile Entertainment is at the helm, and they've got a promising team waiting at the starting line.

Back in August, more than 63,000 gaming enthusiasts (with wallets) were heard, because the ambitious little console-that-could, the OUYA, was funded on Kickstarter by more than 9 times their goal, raking in just over $8.5 million. But that's old news. Here's the new: As promised back then, OUYA is shipping out the actual console to backers who pledged $95 or more in March. Specifically, March 28th. The main product -- retailing at $99 -- will be available to the rest of us slackers in June.

I messed up. Yesterday, I saw the Kickstarter campaign for the 3Doodler, a pen that lets you draw in three dimensions, and didn't think it was something most people would be interested in, so I ignored it. It turns out I was wrong in a big way. The project met its goal in only a few hours, and already has more than 7,000 backers and pledges of $639,955 as I write this. I underestimated how much people want to draw squiggly 3D plastic things.

Thursday I wrote about a Kickstarter campaign that was trying to raise money for Death Star research, and I called it the crowdfunding site's jump-the-shark moment. My concern was that if Kickstarter starts letting stuff like that through, it would soon be overrun with nothing but joke campaigns. Now there's a campaign to fund an X-Wing squadron to stop the Death Star campaign. This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.